Smoke Effect Challenge - Can this be enhanced?

[Brencam]

Hi,
My first post - found this forum and hope I can use you guru's here to expand my knowledge.

I'd like to enhance/boost/thicken the smoke effect in the attached image - i.e. make the smoke more pronounced - WITHOUT creating any artificial smoke in PS). However I can't think of any way to select the smoke (may not be possible).

Anyone here have any suggestions on how this might be done.

TIA,
Brendan

[mistermonday]

I converted the image to LAB and blended part of the L channel with itself in Overlay mode. A little Smart Sharpen helped the final result. How's this?


Regards, Murray

[philbach]

Welcome to Retouch Pro!

I made a loose selection around the smoke and copied that to a new layer.

In the copied Layer I used select/color range to select the smoke.

I inverted the selection and deleted the non smoke in the layer.

I used the option plus the move tool to copy the smoke and move it some.

I used an HSL adjustment layer to change the hue to less blue and desaturated the layer some.

[Brencam]

Phi/Murray
Thx for your efforts - I'm really interested in understanding the approach here - it's a bit like trying to fix hair - not easy. Some comments:

1) Murray - I use Elements, not CS so I can't access the L channel to try your approach.

2) Phil - I notice a pretty hard edge on one side here + the overall effect looks a bit artificial. However you certainly did make the smoke more dense - guess selecting by color range helps - something else not supported by Elements.

FWIW - I'm a bit hesitant to invest in CS right now, with some new Adobe products close to release (Lightroom ?? etc.)

Thx again for your help!

[Albert]

Hi Brencam,

I used the dodge tool set to highlights at 10% opacity

I then duplicated the layer and set to screen

Then added a layer mask and masked around the smoke

Hope this is of any use to you ?

Albert.

[CathyH]

Well I gave it a try, but I couldn't select just the smoke. So I did add in some artificial smoke, and lightened the man in the forground.

1- New layer above the man, then I took a spatter brush at 50% white and made some dots radomly around in the area of the smoke.
2- Filter/distort/wave and I used the default setting
3- edit/fade effect at 60%
4- repeat step 2 many times.
then I erased the areas that didn't look like real smoke.

hope this helps

[philbach]

Well I could have blurred and smudged and liquified the smoke layer to soften and curl it up some but I stopped a tad early.

[Brencam]

Thx again to everyone for the feedback and ideas - this is a great way to learn - the scary thing about PS is that there are so many ways to approach these kinds of problems. So much to learn - it's overwhelming.

The way I try to think about this is in terms of light values and how these can be selected and manipulated by PS steps/actions etc.to achieve the desired results - however that's a tall order given the depth of the PS toolbox. Sometimes I think it might be easier to keep all this straight in one's head in a wet darkroom process (where all the manipulation is very physical and external, rather than numerical/internal as in PS).

Sorry for the ramble - just doing a brain dump. Back to the images - FWIW I think I like Albert's approach it best - I'll give it a shot on my larger images and see how it works out.

THx again to all!

Brendan

[PatrickB]

Same here, I agree with Alberts approach, besides....

I had the thought there is a tad of too much smoke on his picture so I took the original one, put Alberts one on top of it and masked some of the smoke to give it depth. The further away, the less smoke should be visible as it just blows away. And below the cigar there is a huge shadow casted by the man's head so I also masked it away there

[Syd]

I applied Image/Adjustments/Equalize. That got rid of the blue cast.

I then used Unsharp Mask - Threshold 0, Radius 3, Amount 120 and painted in Black the areas that I didn't want sharpened i.e. everything but the smoke.

I then created a new layer, merged visible (cntrl/alt/shit/e ) and applied Filter/Other/High Pass with a Radius of 3 and set the layer to Soft Light.

I then created a final layer, set the blending to Soft Light and with a soft brush (hardness 0) size 8, opacity 5, color white, zoomed in to 200% and accentuated some of the smoke by highlighting it.

Syd

[maureeno]

Has anyone thought about adding a red, glowing tip to the cigar to simulate the glow of the lit cigar?

[Kraellin]

I'd like to enhance/boost/thicken the smoke effect in the attached image - i.e. make the smoke more pronounced - WITHOUT creating any artificial smoke in PS).

you CAN'T thicken it without adding more 'smoke' pixels. you could only enhance what's there as far as hue/saturation/translucency/lightness and so on. so, if you want to remove that restriction of 'without creating any artificial smoke...', you could then thicken.

craig

[Pam]

Here's your glowing tip! : )

___
Pam
http://www.pbase.com/pam_r